Words With Friends

Big Boi from Outkast inspired me to join Words With Friends after I read a Paste Magazine article describing his challenge to fans.  If you've never heard of WWF, it's a version of Scrabble on your phone that is free to use.  You can play simultaneous games with different people at your leisure.  It even has a chat function so you can talk smack in real time.  I downloaded the free version of the application but unfortunately Big Boi had too many game requests.  I'll see if I can find any other celebs to play...

I am very anti-iPhone (it's a horrible phone) and am generally anti-Apple as well, but it's not offered on my Blackberry.  I do have an iTouch, so I can still play WWF when I'm near a WiFi hotspot.  If you want to play me, search for Jayhorn5!

Great Song

If I could write good lyrics, it would be like these. Simple, powerful, beautiful.

Josh Garrels - Ulysses



I'm holding on to the hope that one day this could be made right
Cause I've been shipwrecked, and left for dead, and I have seen the darkest sights
Everyone I've loved seems like a stranger in the night
But oh my heart still burns, tells me to return, and search the fading light

I'm sailing home to you I won't be long
By the light of moon I will press on
Until, I find, my love

Trouble has beset my ways, and wicked winds have blown
Sirens call my name, they say they'll ease my pain, then break me on the stones
But true love is the burden that will carry me back home
Carry me with the, memories of the, beauty I have known

I'm sailing home to you I won't be long
By the light of moon I will press on

So tie me to the mast of this old ship and point me home
Before I lose the one I love, before my chance is gone
I want to hold, her in, my arms

On to Catalina

There's a small diving shop around the corner from my house called Beach Cities Scuba - I bought my underwater camera housing as I mentioned a few months ago. When I was in the shop back in April they had a white board displaying all of their dive trips. The next one went to Catalina Island on June 18th. You might say that Catalina is well known as a good dive spot. People also take day and weekend trips to explore the island but we weren't going to make landfall.

 

If you've ever heard of Catalina, it might be from the song Pasadena by a great band called Modern Skirts. I can play that song on repeat for days.

Anyway, Catalina is also known for its kelp forests and cold water marine life. I'd never done any cold water diving and I heard it was really different than all of the reef diving I did in Australia. I signed up for the trip but was nervous about the water temperature. They rented me a 7 mm wetsuit with hood, gloves and boots but I was still skeptical. All of that plus three meals and a full day on the boat with three dives came out to about $250, so overall it was a pretty good price.

I got up at about 5 am on Saturday morning and drove for 45 minutes up to the marina at San Pedro. The day started off kind of gloomy and uninviting until we shoved off and cruised through a pod of dolphins.



I had forgotten to even worry about sea sickness pills and I was pretty tired from the early morning wake up. I found a spot in the middle of the boat to minimize the rocking and dozed on and off for the 2.5 hour ride. I felt it coming on at one point but managed to keep my breakfast where it belonged. On a day with rougher water, I'm not sure I would've held out.

The dive master paired me up with another solo diver named Alex and they let us all do our own thing. Every other time I've gone diving, it's been with a small group that sticks with the lead. We were really just left to wander on our own. Neither of us had any idea of where to go and I think we probably missed out on the best parts of the dives. Lesson learned - even if you don't have to stick with the dive master, do it. You'll probably get more out of it.

That being said, it was still a pretty cool trip. The wetsuit kept me surprisingly warm and I got a few good pictures. The fish weren't as varied or colorful (except the bright orange Garibaldi pictured below), but I did see a horned shark... not as scary as it sounds. A few of the others saw a 4 foot eagle ray which would've been cool. Again... stick with the dive master.

So here are the pictures. I'm considering another trip to make full use of my camera before the water temperature drops. A day trip to explore the island itself is probably in order as well.

Garibaldi, the California state fish

 

Weaving in and out of the kelp forest

 

Horn shark - they have stingers like rays

 

Sea hare - the size of a small cat

 

Spotted this rock fish for Alex

PCH from LA to San Francisco

One of the best drives in the land

After my solo two week odyssey through Panama, I still had two weeks of (forced) vacation from work. I spent an entire week chilling out in Atlanta with some friends and Zabba, then made my way back to Newport. My girl Daya just so happened to be going to a wedding reception in San Francisco that weekend and invited me along. I had been looking for an excuse to drive up the California coast on the scenic PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), California State Route 1.  It's on every website's top 10 drives in America, so you should, too.

My first time in SF was a whirlwind visit two years ago after a wedding. This time I was hoping to catch a few of the things I missed the last time around, plus soak up the view on the drive north.  I packed a bag for the weekend and took off early on Friday morning to face the LA traffic.

The PCH actually goes right into Newport Beach just a few blocks from my house.  It cuts through all of the beach cities - Huntington, Seal, Hermosa, Redondo, Manhattan... it would've taken me 3 or 4 hours to get through all of the surface street traffic (plus it's not scenic). I skipped it and hopped on the 405 and cut over to the coast on the 101 until it met up with the PCH in San Luis Obispo - a cool little town where I just had enough time to grab lunch. If you're in a hurry you can take the 5 all of the way up to San Francisco in 6 hours but you sacrifice the view.

Up close and personal with a mangy squirrel

From the beginning of the scenic section as I hit the coast, I was quickly reminded of my drive with Nat along the Great Ocean Road on the coast of Victoria, Australia.  No wild koalas or helicopter rides this time though. :(  I stopped pretty frequently along the way to take pictures of the windy route and mostly empty beaches.  I saw a few good surf spots but I had a long way to go and a short time to get there (thanks Jerry Reed).  I wasn't listening to that though... XM was having a Death Cab for Cutie weekend, playing all of the songs off of their upcoming album called Codes and Keys.

I was making pretty good time despite my stops when I started seeing signs for Hearst Castle. I vaguely remembered that William Randolph Hearst was a newspaper tycoon from the early 1900s. When I got home I researched him a bit and found out that he was the inspiration for the lead character in Citizen Kane. Also, his legacy company now owns Cosmopolitan Magazine, Esquire part of ESPN, a dozen or so newspapers and a really cool building in New York City (a modern skyscraper built on top of the original stone structure).  But I digress... the mansion was now a state park and they gave tours so I went to check it out.

Water colors reminded me of Whitsunday Beach

There were packs of old people and Asian tourists everywhere as I pulled up to the visitor's center.  I spotted an employee that told me tickets were $25-35 depending on which part of the house you visited.  The shortest took 2.5 hours.  I didn't have that kind of time so I took a few uninspiring pictures of the mansion from a distance, looked at a few pictures, read some factoids and I was on my way.  Before I left I got a good tip - there had been a landslide a few weeks ago that totally blocked the PCH.  I would actually need to backtrack a few miles and take some switchbacks to get around it.

 I stopped at a gas station to make sure my directions were correct because there were hardly any road signs and my GPS was trying to take me back to the PCH. I had the right route and drove through a military base called Fort Hunter-Liggett. Their training ground had littered shells of tanks and old cars. It looked like I was driving through a firing range... gulp.

The winding road narrowed down to through the foothills of the Sierras to almost one lane at some points. I passed the infrequent cars going surely taking the PCH south and then accelerated like a rally car around the next corner.  The road actually gave some hilltop views that wouldn't have been seen down on the PCH so it wasn't so bad of a detour.  It did take a 2.5 hour chunk from my timeline because I was going 25 mph or less for a lot of it.

Bixby Bridge, built in 1932

With the detour over I got back on the PCH and was going the speed limit (plus) again, but every now and then I would hit construction.  I recommend checking the highway warnings before starting this drive so you know of any road closures.  It looked like there had been more landslides over the past few years that required them to totally rebuild some barriers and sections of road.

One of the coolest parts of the drive had to be the Bixby Bridge near Big Sur that has become a regional landmark. It's supposedly been featured on car commercials and is coincidentally in the name of a song by Death Cab.  The arch spans the steep valley and displays a great blend of nature and engineering.

A long way down

By that time it was starting to get late so my roadside stops became more infrequent. The projected 9 hour drive ended up taking closer to 12 with my stops and the detour.  Yes, I-5 will get you there in under 6 hours, but who wants to drive inland?  I had brought my new camera tripod along but never got it out.  And yes, it would've been nice to have a passenger for conversation, but I had gotten used to the solitude over the past few weeks of traveling.  I also knew that it would be short lived once I got to San Francisco.

I soaked it all in because this would be my last vacation of the year.  By the time I got near Monterey I was starting to get impatient.  I could've taken the PCH all of the way into San Francisco but I decided to hop on the 101 for the rest of the route.  It probably saved me another hour.  This is definitely one of the best road trips and scenic drives I have ever seen.  It's something you must do and will definitely make my Best of California list.

I finally pulled into downtown San Francisco to be greeted by Daya - a fun weekend was in store.  Stay tuned for the rest of the trip!